


You Try To Move Your Feet

by Duck_Life



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Comics)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s05e22 The Gift, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Sister-Sister Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-26
Updated: 2015-10-26
Packaged: 2018-04-28 07:21:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5082832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After being reset to "factory settings", Dawn's still trying to cope as all of her emotions gradually come flooding back. Buffy helps.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Try To Move Your Feet

“Buffy?”

“ _Mmph._ ”

“Buffy, wake up.”

A hand on her shoulder, shaking, and then she’s up and wild-eyed, one hand reaching for the bedside lamp and swinging it in a wide arc. “Whozzat?” she calls out, disoriented and brandishing the lamp. “Whoever you are, that wasn’t a very bright idea.”

Dawn hops away from her sister, hands up in a show of innocence. “No, it’s just- it’s just me. No demons, it’s- wait, did you just make a pun?”

“Hmm?” Buffy sets the lamp back on her nightstand and rubs at her eyes. “I- well, you always have to be prepared in case of an emergency, Dawnie.”

“Right,” Dawn says, lowering her arms. “Sorry. Sorry to wake you up, I’m- you know what, it’s stupid, I’m going back to bed.”

“What?” Buffy lunges forward and grabs at her wrist. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” Dawn says, but Buffy’s not budging and so she sighs and admits, “I had a nightmare.”

“Oh, no, honey, with the- you mean the vampires and the monsters and unspeakable evil? Sweete, that was real life.”

“Shut up,” Dawn says, smiling a tiny bit. Rather than use it as a potential bludgeoning device, Buffy turns on the lamp, and she scoots over so her sister can perch at the edge of her bed.

“What was your nightmare about?”

“Well, it wasn’t…” She keeps doing that, starting and stopping, hesitating. Given the things Dawn’s been known to blurt out, Buffy worries what’s keeping her from talking. “It was just kid stuff, you know? Dumb teenager stuff, the weird emotional déjà vu crap that’s been going on. High school stuff. But, you know, some of the high school stuff was… real.”

Buffy cranes an arm around her sister. “Like Mom?”

“Like you,” Dawn says, voice cracking. For a long moment, Buffy’s very still and very silent, and can’t think of a word to say. She says nothing. “The nightmare, it was- you know, mostly that. Glory. The Key. Being scared. And I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I… I was going downstairs to get some water and watch TV and then when I was walking down that little staircase it just… came right back.”

A single tear winds its way down Dawn’s cheek, and Buffy’s not sure she can do a thing in the world to fix it. “What came right back?” she says softly, but she’s pretty sure she knows.

“The tower,” Dawn says. “After you… after the portal closed, and it was all over. I… I had to walk down that big twisted metal tower. Alone. And you were gone, and… and you even _told_ me, you _told_ me that living was gonna be the hardest thing to do but the thing was that walking down all those steps down that big twisted metal tower all alone was the hardest thing I ever did in my life and you weren’t _there_ at the bottom, like I kept thinking that I would get to the bottom and you would be _fine_ even though I knew it wasn’t true and then, well, it wasn’t true, you were gone, you were _dead_ and I was… and you weren’t even there for my birthday and that whole time I was climbing down that tower, it was just… I couldn’t…”

Buffy throws her other arm around Dawn and holds her tight, one hand clinging to the fabric of her pajama top and the other smoothing over her hair, “It’s okay, I’m here, I came back, it’s okay.”

After she stops crying, Dawn doesn’t let go. They sit there for a while, Buffy reassuring her that she’s alive and well. Hugging, breathing. Living.

“I know you’re alive, and have been,” says Dawn finally. “I know, logically. But emotionally? You just died. This sucks.”

“It really does,” Buffy agrees, reaching out to tuck a lock of Dawn’s hair behind her ear. “I mean, losing a boyfriend because of magic? I’ve been there- it sucks, but I could empathize. _This_ , though… I can’t even imagine, Dawnie. I’m so sorry.”

“Well,” she says, shrugging a tiny bit. “It’s just so weird. And it _hurts_ and it _sucks_ and the weirdest part is that I know what’s coming. I mean I’ve been _waiting_ for this day, the time when I’d wake up and feel the way I felt when you jumped. It’s like when you’re rereading a book and you know the sad part’s coming up but you can’t stop reading.”

“I’m so sorry,” Buffy says again.

“Some days it’s stupid. Like, I’ll suddenly get this rush of embarrassment and it’s because of something silly that happened in school that I only half remember.”

“Well, you know, that’s not your weird emotional junk, Dawn, that happens to everyone.”

Dawn rolls her eyes. “Other stuff, too. I’ve got the idiot crush on Xander, which just feels _creepy_. I mean I’ve _slept_ with him-”

“Lalala, fingers in ears.”

“And then every time I think about the Key stuff I feel _awful_. I kinda got used to that years ago, but emotionally it’s like I just found out I’m not really real.”

“You’re really real,” Buffy says, serious again.

Dawn smiles a little. “I know. And I know that eventually I’ll feel better about that. Because I _did_. I just have to get through so much before I’m back to… I mean.” A big shudder goes through her. “One of these days I’m going to find Tara. Again.”

For a moment, Buffy actually aches for her. “Dawn…”

“I’ll get through it,” she says, crying still. “It’s just sometimes I wonder if I’d be better off starting fresh. I want so badly to be back where I was before, but to go through all this, all over again… I wonder if it’s worth it.”

It’s so late now— or early, really. A hint of the sunrise seeps in through the bedroom window. Buffy finds herself remembering Dawn before she was real, all the invented memories still swimming around her brain.

The night she died, the first time, and Dawn stayed up way past her bedtime to interrogate her about the spring fling— what everyone wore, who kissed whom, who looked the prettiest, could she maybe try on the dress. She was eleven years old and didn’t know a damn thing about prophecies or vampires, but somehow she knew exactly what to say to take Buffy’s mind off everything.

Or her birthday, after Angel lost his soul, when she finally got a chance to stop running and fighting and she spent an entire day in bed, exhausted and drained and feeling like it was all her fault, and Dawn thought she was just sick so she tried to make her a bowl of soup except she didn’t know that cans weren’t supposed to go in the microwave.

The summer after that, when she was in L.A. completely out of contact with everyone, except for the little sister she called every single week in secret.

“Dawn,” she says finally, as the gray light outside gets redder, “I hate that you have to go through all this. I do. And I want to say that it’s not worth it, because nothing in the entire world is worth you hurting.” She sighs and presses a kiss to Dawn’s forehead. “Except for you. I’m sorry, and it’s not fair, but the person you were was amazing. I don’t know what I would have done without her. I don’t want to know.” Dawn nods, like she’s thought about it herself. “You’re my sister. You’re always my sister. It’s up to you which one you want to be, though. The imaginary one or the dancing one or the shoplifting one or the… weird horse one.”

Dawn laughs, a little. “I don’t know if I really have a choice,” she says, slumping against the bed. “I just kind of have to keep going. Until I catch up to where I was.”

Buffy hangs onto her as the sun comes up. “I’ll be here,” she promises. “I’ll be here until you do. And after.”


End file.
